John Piper’s Big Book on the Providence of God

hi i'm joe rigney a professor of theology and literature at bethlehem college and seminary i'm here with john piper lead teacher at desiring god and chancellor of bethlehem college in seminary and we're here to talk about john's book providence john welcome thanks so much for doing it i'm eager to get into it me too you are 40 plus years into ministry you've been preaching and teaching you've written over 50 books and now at this point in your your ministry you write a 700 page book on providence why that book why now yeah especially when nobody reads seven books um i'm very much aware of that although i i try to persuade myself that people who influence other people might read 700 page books and another reason why a 700 page book right now might not be a mistake is that the reason there's 700 pages because there's 3 000 bible references did you know that i didn't there were a lot when i read through the book there were just covered i have encountered the index pages but it will be long in other words uh people who don't read the book and they'll beat lots of them and that's fine because you can pick out pieces they'll put it on the shelf and they'll know that book is dense with bible and if i take it down and go to the index i might find the text i'm puzzled about in the index and go and find out but that's probably not what you asked the the reason is for decades i have said i want i want to write a big book on sovereignty that's what i've said all these years to to pull all the pieces together because ever since my my second book the justification of god way back in the early 80s i wrote that that's one of the reasons i'm in the pastor is because i wrote that book on romans 9 and god said get up there and proclaim it and don't just analyze it so ever since those early books i've said i need to just pull all the bible together so i've never written a whole bible anything it's always been thematic with jumping around in the bible and this is an effort to go from genesis to revelation twice and get at the providence of of god because it's under everything i've ever written it's the way i've written it the goal of everything i've ever written and so it feels um climactic i like if i died before this interview was over i would say fine i did it i did it i got the big book done everything else is overflow after that so i it started i mean i started the actual writing when i was 72 i'm 74 now it finished so it took a couple of years and it felt like if i put this off any longer because i'm not ready it'll never it'll never get done and i i took this blue paperback nasb 20 years ago and just read it through marking it in blue if it looked like sovereignty yellow if it looked like a problem for sovereignty and when i when i was done it was a really blue bike and i thought okay there's plenty to work with here and then oh my the method just went from there yeah so let's talk about that how do you write a 700 page book it's it's a vast book it's it's at least um i was going to say it's comprehensive but i don't think anything humans do is ever comprehensive but but it has a um it aspires to be more comprehensive than smaller books so how do you write a book like this right well the way i think is to put everything i say and as much as i'm self-conscious when i say it through the grid of scripture so i don't really want to say anything that claims any credibility that isn't warranted by the bible so that means i took that blue bible i handed it to the guys at desiring god it said turn that into a a word document for me cut and paste however you want to do it and they in due time handed me a very thick i don't know how many hundred single-spaced pages maybe of just texts now it's searchable all right so i set aside a 12-week summer and i said okay here's my raw material i've got a hundred pages of text about providence now what how do you turn that into anything and i went through and i tagged them thematically i just made up tags as i went along that has to do with the death of a child that's to do with the removal of king that has to do with the virgin birth that has to do with the conversion of a center and i created these tags there were dozens and dozens of them now the tags are searchable okay so you can immediately click and go and say you know election uh sovereignty and everything relating to election is going to jump out at the search so i created dozens and dozens probably 60 okay 60 subcategories of providence texts right and i just stare at him i mean this is this is when you quit right this is when you don't this is a bad thing this is why people don't write books right is they they get to this stage of conception and they look at it and say i have no idea what to do with that mass that mass material but i just want to encourage people that if you push through those moments of impossibility the lord will give you light so i i grouped him and once i get some categories and i say okay the book will have a probably a chapter on um whether or not god controls fertility whether or not god controls um the kings and and uh and nations and whether or not god controls whether you get sanctified or not and and once those are in place you just start writing you don't know what you're writing the end of the book the middle of the book at the beginning you just start writing and and my what i've discovered over the years is that to to write is to learn to write is to discover if i just stare at pages thinking now what's the structure what's the outline it never happens i have to start writing and when i write ideas become clearer for okay this will be two chapters not one this will be a part not a chapter this will be at the end not the beginning and that emerges through the writing right so then paul says to timothy think over what i say sovereignty the lord will give you insight for you is at least partly right right over what right what you think yeah yeah and the lord will give you in it's because for me writing is thinking right i mean it's it's the best thinking reading is thinking if you read well but reading is thinking more or less as loosey-goosey as your brain is writing doesn't let you be loosey-goosey not you have to slow down so much you can see your foolishness as you put it on paper and so you correct exactly you you say that that's really that an ambiguous word or that has a double meaning or whatever and as you write it clarity comes and so that text think over what i say becomes for me even my private journaling right over what i say and the lord will give you understanding so uh dan fuller your professor wrote a big book called unity of the bible that was kind of his magnum opus it was his thing so i read this book and i think if somebody asks what's john piper's magnum opus people are probably going to say something like well desiring god that's that got everything started that was the the one but as i'm reading this book it seems like this is you're really wanting this to be a decisive lodestar central book the number of times i'm reading your footnotes and you're pointing at other things you've written right is that how you think about this book is is this book a kind of the if it's a if you're if your ministry is a wheel this is that hub and then all the spokes come off of it um yes i think i think it's fair to say yes if somebody in a year from now so the book is to come out in january 20 1 21. um if in 2022 or between there and when i die anybody asks me where could i go to get the fullest picture of what and how john piper thinks about god and life and the bible where would i go and i'd say go to providence so yes it's it's a some like i said earlier it's it's under everything and it's it's the goal of everything like where is it where are all the books going right and and what is underneath all the books and the answer is providence right so as we let's turn to the book and let's think through um throughout the book you return again and again to the issue of assumptions okay this is a major thing you you can't read through this book and not pick up john piper thinks a lot about our assumptions um and how they influence the way that we read the bible so help us understand two things one why is it so important to be aware of our assumptions and two why and how should we test them by the scriptures rather than impose them on the scriptures what are assumptions doing and why do they matter for us yeah well it might help instead of speaking in generalities to give an example okay um the reason they're important to state of generality is that we tend to see things in the light of our assumptions and interpret them to fit our assumptions okay we bring all of us to this it's not pointing our finger to anybody this is all of us bring life experiences and conceptions of reality to what we experience in and outside books in the bible and we tend to see what we see in connection with those assumptions and that can give a meaning which might be helpful if it's a true assumption or hurtful harmful misleading if it's a wrong assumption so that's why they're so important they tend to be controlling for example i mean the reason it shows up probably so often is that the assumption that one must have free will meaning self-determination i would even say ultimate self-determination one must have that in order to be held accountable before god is an assumption that i think millions of people bring to the bible which i don't share i did once i assumed once that if i'm not decisively and ultimately the one say who at the moment of my conversion cast the deciding vote i can't be held accountable i'm a robot you can't find that assumption in the bible so that gets to your second question right all right is that a true or a false assumption one must have ultimate self-determination in order to be held accountable before god for the things that you do by your will is that true and my approach is i want to as best i can test my assumptions by texts that push back right i mean some texts easily fit two assumptions go either way well that's no help in citing which assumption the text that you have to come to terms with most are the texts that clearly say that assumption's right or that can't be right in view of this and that takes really serious humility because you might be wrong and you have to come to terms with your error and your fallibility and it takes i think significant give and take with other people who see things differently from you i remember when i was in college and um you some of your writings actually led me to question a number of my assumptions and the method that i settled upon i don't know why providence probably uh for trying probably no probably uh for trying to adjudicate this was i i printed off some of your articles i think at the time from desiring god and then i went and i tried to find the best that i could find online of an opposing view so an armenian view in this case and i had your articles and i had those articles and i had my bible and then i would just sit there and i would look at the text that you would point to and i would then look at the text that they would point to and i would go and i would try to see which which one of these explanations is making the most sense of those verses and i remember um this is the sort of thing that an 18 year old thinks uh thinking um and this is going to take a really long time i i i had a journal that was you know so i'm writing through thinking through and i'm thinking i'm undertaking a very big this is big i'm thinking about god and how he relates to human beings there's not a bigger question and you'd convince me this is a major thing so i'm thinking this is a big question this might take me the rest of my life to figure out which side might take at least the rest of my college career and i remember within a couple of weeks just feeling like oh there's just no question this is just bible bible bible bible bible that illuminates and this is all assumptions about what the bible must mean given these assumptions so so that resonates with me so i was reading through the book and feeling like i remember what it was like to have my assumptions uh challenged uh in that way and just to encourage folks you remember those days you didn't describe them as bleakly as i feel the days that i remember i remember i was 22 years old just beginning seminary bumping into dan fuller reading jonathan edwards and watching my world dismantled i mean it is not comfortable i remember going back from jim morgan's systematic theology class where he's rubbing my nose in romans 9 about election and and the sovereignty of god and i was i was just a rabid free willer you know i'm the guy who held a pen in front of his face dropped it on the floor and said i did it i did it god didn't do that i'd do that and i would go back and i would put my my face in my hands and i would cry it was it was that distressing to watch things that i had just taken for granted for 22 years or 20 years whenever i start thinking when i'm four and so yes absolutely to to test your assumptions to find them wanting is a painful thing but oh the the joy and the liberty that comes once you make your way through and feel like i really believe now i'm being honest with the book that's good so let's talk move from assumptions to definitions um you you try to avoid a lot of technical definitions in the book you want this to be accessible even though 700 pages it's very readable it's it's expositions of of passages but you do carefully define certain key terms so maybe just talk for a minute about you the book's called you said you want to write a book on sovereignty and you wrote a book called providence why providence not sovereignty right um and how do you define it exactly for years and years i i never used the word providence it's not in the bible so i'm not inclined to use it of course neither is that that's right that's right and and neither is discipleship and neither is counseling and neither yeah um so i loved from age 23 to now the sovereignty of god and as soon as i began to put my hand to the paper to account for what sovereignty is how it functions where it's illustrated in the bible i realized i can't write meaningfully about this without talking about why god is doing what he's doing the why question okay you know that had not put itself forward as what i would write about that i wrote about that with god's passion for his glory right edwards and and god's passion for his glory the god is about magnifying god in the in the world i've settled that issue that's another book and here i'm going to write about he's got the right power to do it right and i realized that's going to be a very odd book it's going to leave so many questions unanswered so as soon as i began to unpack purpose why do you do what you do that became a third of the book and i realized okay calling it sovereignty isn't really adequate anymore because sovereignty is i mean providence is purposeful sovereignty so that's my definition definitely a short definition the difference between sovereignty and providence is that sovereignty is god's right and power to do as he pleases and providence is this purposefully so you have to talk about where he's going what's it all about why is he trying what's he trying to achieve in the world and so that's my understanding of problems okay uh next word you mentioned this one already but free will um you try to avoid a lot of technical discussions of this yeah but you but you want to try to talk about good assumptions or good definitions and bad definitions so maybe talk about the bad definition you've already alluded to it but maybe unpack it a little more and then what's a better definition for that reality yeah um that's a sacred phrase in america american evangelicalism in particular free will um and to challenge it is to get yourself into uh trouble but people sell them i mean ordinary run-of-the-mill people seldom pause and say here's exactly what i mean and that's why confusion is endlessly created as you argue back and forth whether we free will and or sovereignty and it's because the definitions aren't given so i uh i can point to a couple of major uh believers in free will at the upper echelons of philosophical reflection who would embrace the definition i use them i don't have a quirky definition quirky definitions don't help help right um and my definition is the best way to talk about free will if you want to get to the nub of the issue as to whether we have it in conversion is ultimate self-determination okay and sometimes i use the word decisive as well as ultimate ultimate sounds like way off in the distance somewhere decisive means right now who's casting the deciding vote so at the very moment this is how i get at the nub of the issue of free will at the very split second of my passing from unbelief to belief dead to life uh not trusting god to trust in god not saved to saved not born but born again at that decisive moment is john piper or god decisive right is he ultimately in control and my answer is the bible teaches quite apart from anybody's assumption that god is decisive at that moment therefore we don't have free will in that sense now if people gonna go then i'm a robot i say no no what what you mean by free will is my choices really matter they really count i'm really responsible and i'm just nodding my head like you're nodding your head exactly you do have that kind of will and that's why you're responsible and if they shake their head and say well how can my willing be real how can i be accountable in what i will and god be decisive in my choices and my answer is you don't need to know how right you need to know is it true is it true and and i would i mean i spent 700 pages and uh you know one of the reasons this prince is kind of for talking about providence in regard to say a pandemic or the death of a child or a child born with a disability or a mom dying at age 40 when she has four kids the reason for talking about that is that if people see that in the bible it's remarkable how easily they tend to believe god saved me he decisively saved me i didn't save myself i wasn't decisively in control because a lot of their opposition has fallen before something that really hurts so i think that's an important point i want to dwell on in a minute um believing that something is true from the bible and explaining how it is true so in this case how is it the case that god is purposefully sovereign in everything exhaustively so and yet i um have a i do what i want it's a good definition of free will that's what i typically use somebody asked you believe in free will do you mean do i do what i want i think absolutely i do what i want it doesn't answer all the questions but the inability to comprehensively reconcile how providence and whatever kind of free will i have work together i don't need to know that in order to say both are true and i love them right right okay so um does that mean that you're willing to say that's a mystery do you think it's a mystery or do you have explanation mean bad music okay now we're gonna go more definition i mean i mean that's not a joke because the bible uses the term mystery in a pretty distinct way the mystery of the kingdom is not i have no idea what the kingdom is about yeah it means it's been concealed for generations it is now revealed in jesus christ and i preached the mystery of christ paul says so when i say you got to define mystery if but i know what you mean and most people mean by mystery is it's beyond present human comprehension yes and in that sense yes i'm willing to affirm mystery and that's one of them i have several i mean there's lots of things i don't know but i don't tend to call everything a mystery because that kind of cheapens the word the things that really count and the one you're pushing on is you say piper that our wheel our will is real and our accountability is real and god is decisively in control of the will in all things at all times i'm willing to say i cannot finally and decisively give an explanation that either status has me or i've not met anybody that explains how that can be right the how question and that that i can't do it now doesn't mean it's not doable right i mean edwards went pretty far in distinguishing the the natural ability and the moral ability and i found that very very helpful yeah but but that the point is you don't have to embrace edward's account of the will in order to embrace what you're trying to do in the book no no i i very much want to be biblical rather than systematic if i have to give up one right in other words if i but i didn't say logical right if you go there i mean i'm accused of being illogical right and i reject that i believe logic is god's creation i mean it reflects god he he's he he doesn't commit the law of non-contradiction just break that law things can't be a and not a at the same time in the same way god is a logical being i don't think in saying that god governs the will and my will is accountable is illogical it doesn't break any logical laws so one way one way i've tried to put this like when i'm talking to our students here at bethlehem is a major task in theology is putting the mystery in the right place that's good um and so like you said there's certain things so doctrine of the trinity say how is god three and one how how is god three and one that he's three in one seems plain from text how we got all kinds of terms that we use to try to say the how but there should be mystery there how is christ god and man that's a mystery hypostatic union and then here the intersection of creator and creature and how creator governs creature in a way that preserves creaturely integrity and responsibility those are the places where mysteries to be expected and not dismissed or if i can't explain how then i don't affirm either side but we should expect mystery in those places right right and and getting it in the right place on this particular issue is challenging because people want to locate the mystery between okay i have free will and god is sovereign and i can't figure it out and i said that's not where the mystery lies you don't have free will and the ultimate self-determining exactly right god governs your will now your definition earlier just go back and search yeah when you said uh i do what i want i do what i want that that's freedom to do not freedom to will uh i will what i want okay that's not the same thing and that that would be a good definition i mean want i want what i want i will what i want means i'm going to trace it back to me i'm tracing the the inclinations of my heart back finally and ultimately to me that's a little that's a little different than do what i want yeah i i think part of what we mean is there's a sort of the spontaneous sense that when i will it's me willing and i think we want to affirm yes you as a human being have a intellect and you have a will and you use them and god is unique so if i will something means john piper didn't make me will it like you put a gun to my head that would be some force or compulsion being exercised or you tie me to chair so i can't stand up says edward's right but god's not like that god's in a class by himself in relation to us and so the mystery of how the creator in mechanisms like you couldn't diagram it on a whiteboard students have asked for that and i said you just that's not the kind of question so it's more important i think this is what's so helpful about the book is to just hold before our eyes the number of ways that you get the affirmations and the celebrations even of that providence alongside you're absolutely responsible for your choices and then the message is don't let one true thing in the bible cancel out another true thing in the bible right don't let one text mute another text let them all stand even if you can't explain at the ultimate level how yep and i think we become theologians i mean lay people can become serious deep saints by letting the bible be the bible and year by year mulling over the seeming paradoxical things that you can't put together and if you do that you find that the roots get closer and closer and one day you might say you know that's not as much of a paradox as i thought it was right and you'd never get down there if you said uh one of these can't be true right that's i've that experience of all of a sudden realizing there was a time when this felt like a really thorny thing and now i can't explain to someone when they say you know so when there's like you were with with the tears and the struggle it's like i know that there were times where i felt that and then for whatever reason it doesn't feel that way there's just a kind of like the pressures relieved it's a really remarkable thing all right i want to turn and i want us to talk about probably the major objection to what you describe in the book is providence which is evil and i want us to talk about it in kind of different stages and so let's start with natural evil so by natural evil i mean things like cancer sickness barrenness all of which you treat in detail in the book and you argue all of these are governed by god's good providence so maybe take us to some texts if you've got some off the top of your head for why you think that so that that natural evils are governed by providence and why is that good news and not terrifying news it is terrifying news in two senses uh one if you're not a believer and god is totally in charge and he's sovereign and you're against him you should be terrified uh second if i were told tonight by the lord jesus you're going to be burned at the stake for your faith i'd be terrified so i don't want to glibly say oh if you've got a providence figured out you don't have to be terrified at anything you don't have to be afraid that's not true um but back to your main question why would i say that all natural evil or all-natural phenomena are governed by god and the answer is because in a hundred places in the bible it says they are jesus said not a bird falls from the sky apart from your father when job was stricken with boils it said satan did it or when the children died it said the wind did it and in both cases job attributed it ultimately to god the lord gave and the lord is taken away blessed be the name of the lord says his wife shall receive good at the hand of the lord and not evil and so he's he's chalking up natural evils to god's ultimate all of the plagues in the old testament that god sends are of god frogs obey god gnats obey god locusts obey god worms in jonah obey god fish obey god this is the most important problem because of how many people die in floods and storms every year jesus says peace be still and the winds and the waves obey him i've never heard anybody tell me today how jesus reigning in heaven with resurrection power and omnipotence can't say to a tsunami moving towards the indian coast where it's going to take out 200 000 people he can't do anything about it he can't say tsunami be still if he can't say tsunami be still he's not the same yesterday today and forever so texts like that are pervasive in the bible jesus is sovereign over disease he heals it jesus is sovereign over demons jesus is sovereign over death jesus is sovereign over everything that is hurtful to man and he delivers them or not so you mentioned the job story why not say in a place like that where satan is clearly active um you know god tells satan behold all that he has is in your hand that's what god says to the devil so why not say that satan is responsible satan's the one who sent the chaldeans upon job's flocks and sent that wind that knocked down the house and sent the boils that afflicted job so there's all of these evils and god says say it's satan and so why not why not stop there why not say it's it's satan who did it why go to god yo well let's make sure i mean i thought you were going to ask why not say satan did it and i was going to say we should okay but you said why should we stop there so let's deal with both of those maybe it's a danger for people like me to diminish the significance of secondary causes i don't want to the bible doesn't when jesus healed the woman he said satan had bent her over for 18 years for you and simple he didn't say god he said satan has bent her over and she can't straighten up for 18 years that's the work of satan now he didn't say god didn't do it but he said satan so we should we should wherever satan is manifest and we discern that from the bible especially he's very busy we should hate him and strive against him with god's power so that is fixed secondary causes whether human or demonic or natural should be affirmed and dealt with that's why we want a vaccine in the pandemic right now we cry god have mercy we know somebody you and i know somebody who's close to death right now in hennepin county with covid and we know god could supernaturally do that but they just started giving him intravenous stuff this afternoon we want that to work too secondary causes really matter we love them their gift of god now why not just stop there and the reason is because we're not dualists we don't want to say well there are two forces in the world there's satan and there's god and it's it's a great warfare theology going on here and we'll see who wins in the end i don't want to say to my kids i don't want to say to myself or my church um satan really does have the upper hand and god is bound can't do anything about it and i don't just say that logically systematically inferentially like it just has to be that way because god is god i think that's true but that doesn't really cut it as much as give me some texts and the text is that satan in verse 10 of chapter 2 struck job with boils it says satan struck him doesn't say that about his kids leaves that kind of open the wind struck the kids but satan struck him with the boils when those boils from the top of his head that's the wickedness of satan satan making the saint suffer satan loves it he hates christians or saints and then joe and so his wife says just curse god and die because god is just letting satan rule and job says so shall we shall we receive good at the hand of the lord and not evil meaning job would not have it and and the writer of the book i mean you could say that's bad theology right there's a lot of pantheon jokes and that's part of it but would you get to chapter 42 verse 11 they comfort job for all the evil that the lord had brought upon him that's what 42 11 says it's amazing how many commentaries pass over that verse it's probably the most important verse in the book right because you say it's totally gone at that point i mean he's he was there we should acknowledge but by the end it's not he's not the and the inspired writer is the one who is saying this and james new testament chapter 5 verse 11 says behold the purpose of the lord how he is compassionate and merciful it was all going there and satan was god's lackey he was god's lackey and i want people out there to know i'm looking out there because this is where i used to preach [Music] i want them to know that satan is real and according to revelation 2 10 he can throw you in prison and kill you and you should get in his face and say make my day which is what jesus did in in the in the last hours of his life in gethsemane when they came to get him and the rioters jesus says this is your hour and the power of darkness i love that you get one hour have me you're on a leash have me and god is ordaining that satan enter into judas judas sells him for 30 pieces fulfills scripture hands him over gets him killed for millions of salvation and raises him from the dead so one hour you get and you kill yourself satan what an idiot so so with that wouldn't some people want to say there okay i get i get what you're saying piper but um satan has these evil purposes he wants to destroy us he wants to steal kill destroy um and god is very resourceful and so satan means it for evil and god uses it for good you talk about this in the book and and it's in the passage you're discussing um the joseph story uh about what his brothers meant so why why why is it not enough to say what satan means for evil god uses for good right one reason is because that text chapter 50 verse 20 of genesis which sums up the story when joseph says to his brothers who are scared to death that he's going to take out revenge on them he said you meant evil against me but god meant it for good same word in hebrew meant not meant used so you can't say oh we've got a text here that says humans or satan means evil but god only uses evil he doesn't ever will that it come to pass this is not true and there are many many texts to that that effect so that text won't work for use and neither will the most important event in the world namely the death of jesus where acts chapter 4 verses 27 and 28 says herod and pilate and and the soldiers and the crowds were gathered together to do what your plan and your hand had predestined to take place the worst sin in the history of the world was predestined to take place by god he didn't just use the death of jesus he planned the death of jesus which which really joe gets to the heart of the matter why i can get worked up about people who deny the sovereignty of god because i would have no gospel without it if if if god did not will to bruise his son 700 years before in isaiah or millions of years before in eternity if he didn't do that there is no gospel if jesus death was the work of satan or the work of random fate or the work of the conspiracy of the romans and god just picked up the pieces afterwards he's not the god of the gospel and so i'm lost my sin is has no forgiveness and this is a place again where we want to you you would want to underline believing that it's true is different than believing how how you know so that there's a part of people i think at that moment say but explain how it could be that that satan does it and god does it and this is another place where we're just going to say you don't have to know how you need to believe that because that the bible is pressing you to believe both that this that in job's case satan and the chaldeans and the wind and the all of that are in work and behind it is the merciful and compassionate hand of god and so also with christ and therefore so also with everything yeah yeah just one more text so that people feel the force of this for their own personal lives so paul in second corinthians 12 has these revelations of being in heaven and they are so unspeakably great that god foresees the possibility that this could make his ego go bonkers and become defeated and proud and so it says he gave him a thorn in the flesh a messenger of satan that he might not be conceited now satan is not in the business of keeping people from being deceited conceited god is this is god's thorn and satan is used to do it so this is god using satan to sanctify paul must gall satan to be used in that way so that he does it is clear from many texts if people stumble over okay how does the agency of satan and the superintending agency of god actually work and say well just keep reading keep reading you may see clues that i haven't even seen but don't give up the sovereignty of god don't give up the agency of satan let the bible be the bible right right um it's one of those so you we've gone to job and we've gone to to christ um but i think it's like there's there's a way and i think this is one of the things that struck me in the book is the places where you lingered to try to make the gravity the bible is going to linger in these places and so you wanted to linger in these places and say god sees to it that's one of the ways you define providence is god sees to it that the greatest horrors in the world happen which includes the slaughter of children included includes cannibalism mothers cannibalizing their children and there's a part of me that just wants to say john piper do you really mean that like like there's a way of like staring the horrors of that in the face and saying i don't know how but god is here too so i'm just asking like like when you when you like there's a weightiness to the book in those chapters right um when you get to i mean that's they're about two-thirds three-quarters of the way there and you just kind of push pause you know you're not content to say he governs the heavens and he governs the wind and the waves you you go to the most horrible things and you say we need to see this so what what do you see in those places when when or or maybe maybe the question is when you see providence and the horrors like that what happens for john piper well let me let me get there indirectly for how the lord prepares the heart of john piper i remember hearing rc sproul respond one time to somebody who had catalogued all of the capital crimes in the law of the old testament i forget how many several dozen why are there so many capital crimes he says to sprawlings paul said mercy because they were all capital crimes at the beginning there isn't anything but capital crimes now so you start with the fall and either we're just gonna give up on christianity and the bible entirely or come to terms with the fact that when adam fell god consigned everyone to destruction so he owes nobody anything god can do me no wrong no matter how much i suffer and then you move to the flood nice story for kids right right how many millions of people drowned most of them probably under five eight people get rescued and the entire world drowns 185 000 soldiers in one night that means 185 000 widows probably and 500 000 orphans the angel of the lord killed them all you just walk right through the bible either we give up the bible or or we i'm talking about the effects so those those texts just flatten me they just flatten me and say my tendency to rebel against you lord is clearly owing to something amiss in my soul i'm not seeing things the way you see them if i find fault with you for the fall and the effect it has on humanity and i realize i'm just so self-exalting so that's the preparation of over time the lord has just caused me to say it's either the bible or throw it all away now when i come to the horrors i say shall not the judge of all the earth do right and i gather around me texts of i was just walking over here tonight saying the lord is good to those who call upon him he's good the lord is wise the lord is merciful the lord all the works of the lord are righteous all the works of the lord are just a preach the justice of god the righteousness of god the goodness of god the mercy of god and i realize that every day in this world billions and billions and billions of people are experiencing mercy from god with every breath they take every plane that lands every train that stays on the track every car that passes at four feet 60 miles an hour and doesn't crash every one of those are gift gift gift gift gift mercy and goodness everywhere along with the horrors in the world and i like sarah edwards when jonathan died at age 53 was it born in 1703 he died 1758 before his birthday but anyway he does uh because the the his throat swole up he couldn't he couldn't swallow and he was only halfway through his well three-fourths of the way through his life and she she says we put our hands on our mouth and we kiss the rod that's the kind of submission i want so here what just one illustration i'm listening to a book right now and it drew attention to the fact that adam smith the economist um from centuries ago two centuries ago um drew attention to the fact that human beings are like this if today we heard that china had an earthquake and it opened the earth and swallowed a hundred million people the whole at that time the whole country swallowed up covered over they are no more and the news came to america china is no more 100 million people just went underground dead he said within a day most of us would be able to sleep through the night but not if our finger was cut off i mean stories like that comments like that say that's true and that sounds really bad to me i mean bad about me i don't have the capacity to feel um the horrors that you're talking about so that i think it's legitimate for a critic to say to me okay you you talk about that and you're nice you know you're nice you're dressed you're warm you're well fed you're healthy you've got a pension blah blah blah wait till you actually have to look it in the face and and my answer to that is i pray god will grant me the grace to be submissive to his will and weep with those who weep and trust the sovereignty of god you know that when i get into the pastoral issue then that's that's a good transition therefore um what would you say to someone who hears reads what you're writing and about the horrors and says if god does that if god if god governs in god if he sees to it that fill in the blank on whatever the horror is and it might be the big global ones or it might be the deeply personal one then they say i don't know how to come to him for comfort this is a little bit there's there's a way in which this is the person who really wants to come to god for comfort but the goodness and loving kindness of god and the providence of god feel like they pull in such opposite directions and so they they see what the bible says about god's all-pervasive providence but they're unable to um really emotionally hold it together with god's deep love and goodness how how do you help someone in that in that position because i imagine somebody's gonna be watching the video and who if they were to read the book we'll just see the text after text and say i don't know how to answer any of that but i don't know what to do now when i don't feel like i can come to god yeah yeah i i tell them you know there's a professor at bethlehem college in seminary named joe rigney and he teaches literature among other things and has a real good sense of the power of story in people's lives and the precious value of heroes who combine virtues that usually are considered distinct and separate and torn apart in our culture and what we need are some magnificent human being models who over here on the one side are vicious in their justice and over here are tender with a child and we don't have to go to fiction i mean they're all over the place right and and we don't have many models maybe our fathers were not like that i think one of the reasons i probably believe what i believe is because i i was terrified at the fire in my father's eyes and there wasn't a funnier and happier man on the planet than my father i i lived with the paradox of of the bible at home most people don't have that that that privilege but we have jesus and if you just read through the whole gospels over and over again don't isn't that what you see i mean jesus is severe with his enemies and can be so blunt with people you say whoa how that doesn't feel tender at all and other times so tender so kind so patient so merciful and so if you have one person pulling together what feels so at odds that personal model whether it's jesus in the gospels or whether it's some model a hero in fiction you say it really is possible that god would be approachable tender loving kind merciful patient with me and i think and that he'd be sovereign and i think the cross is at the center of history because it should be at the at the center of our lives i mean maybe paul probably the most i don't know maybe not but i was gonna say the most important sentence he said was scarcely for a good man will one righteous number one die but perhaps for a good man one might dare to die but god shows his love for us and that while we're yet sinners christ died for us so the the giving of his son to have us for his friend his the bride for his son his son pre-destined to sunship before the foundation that is what you've got to preach to people who are feeling there's no way this sovereign god could be approachable no way he could be tender or kind or patient and you want to say yes he can be yes he can be and let me tell you about jesus let me tell you about the death of jesus let me tell you about the father who doesn't spare his son so maybe shift the question to pastors and and maybe um the use a book like this might be you said not everybody would read it but that hopefully people uh who want to influence others might sit and soak in it and and pastors would be at the top of that list um how should pastors think about bringing the biblical truth about providence to bear in in their ministries and i'm thinking in particular about just the the wisdom issues that go into it when it comes to um preaching it counseling with it leaning on it so just you've been a pastor for for 40 years and so what how do you how should they think about a book like this and the truth that it embodies and what should they do with it in the ministry yeah i think they should say up front to their people that um he's going to be patient with them as they come along especially when it comes to the issues of sovereignty and free will or sovereignty and suffering um because he's going to say some things that are going to be mind-boggling to people and that he he should create a space in his church where they can grow into that that's the first thing and what you mean by that is that there's a way that you could wield a truth as a almost as a weapon yeah as if you don't even give a hoot whether they believe it or not right you know and and we're pastors those are sheep and they're hungry and they want life-giving food and there's an annotation in this that way and and you need to help them say you know you can grow into this taste like i haven't yet grown into certain tastes but i have grown into some taste what were you gonna say i was gonna say that there's a way in which um so with the goodness question i ca i don't know how to come to god for comfort in his goodness and love and believe that he's sovereign one of the things i thought would be um to tell someone who's in that position um cling to the goodness and don't shut the door on the providence even if you can't love the providence don't just reject it right so so i i want to kind of direct them to the goodness of god and and for me that would that would effectively be an act of faith on my part as the pastor that lord you're going to have to help them see this love it um embrace it treasure it i can't make that happen and so what i can do is give that space and and exhort them encourage them he's good he's good he's good he loves you he's good cling to him and just in clinging to him don't slam the door on providence is that my thinking about that yes i say the reverse is true too if they've got a good handle on the sovereignty of god and and they are doubtful about the goodness i mean either way whether whether you're clear on goodness and you love it but you doubt that providence thing or you love this certain personalities will love the providence they're not right they don't care much about whether god is good or not that's terrible we should i think we're inviting people to live in tension and to pray earnestly so yes i like that don't shut the door on the aspect of god that seems least clear to you love the book not that red one the black one love this book and put it on top of the red one there so that you keep things straight but back back to your question it is so crucial this is what i loved about being a pastor as opposed to say a conference speaker a pastor gets to weaken and week out build a mindset in his people so that 10 years from now when the stillbirth happens and you're there and this baby lives two hours or they know he's dead three months before she gives birth and she's got to go through labor to deliver a dead baby they've heard you talk about this for 10 years you hardly need to say a word because they've come to love god's good sovereignty they know this is a work of god ultimately and that he'll use that very sovereignty to see them through so a lot how a pastor relates to people depends so much on on their shared experience shared theology shared life together so that he you know i've said to tom steller who i've worked with for 40 years now i said along the way you know tom one of the greatest things about visiting the other one when he's dying i'll probably die first so when you visit me we won't have to say anything right we won't have to say anything you know everything i know tom i know everything you know about god we've taught each other for 40 years it'll all be there one touch will communicate a ton of theology and and to the degree that that's true of people you don't need to preach in fact preaching in the moment of pain it's probably the least effective thing so i i would say you know you walk into the setting you've been called it's a crisis horrible losses happen you show up what you do first thing you you say is you hug i did this for roland erickson his son 25 years old dies totally unexpected in heart surgery he calls me we just lost david and i run over to the hospital down here is about five minute walk from my house and i walk in and i just grab him and sob on his shoulder and and say i'm so sorry i'm so so sorry and then you step back and you try to discern the moment silence now just silence for the next half hour or does he does he wants a word does he want encouragement and you just plead for wisdom from the lord as to whether they're they're hungry for some stabilizing word like many are the afflictions of the righteous but the lord brings him out of them all or god reigns he's sovereign god is our refuge i think about that that that story reminds me just of of jesus here's a purposeful providence moment right with delaying lazarus is sick come down i'm gonna wait because i love him i'm gonna wait and then when he goes down it doesn't keep him from grabbing and hugging and weeping at the tomb five minutes before he says death let him go um and so i think that there's ways in which jesus can model model for us there's a purposeful providence that jesus has just got and and yet it doesn't it doesn't keep him from deeply feeling the tragedy no no no no we we must disabuse people of the notion that deep confidence in the good purposes of god in all suffering means you shouldn't cry you shouldn't feel pain pain is is not a reflection of unbelief doubt and anger at god that's a reflection of unbelief but pain at loss is just pain and what you do when you feel pain is cry and so when my mother was killed what the lord taught me in those two hours of weeping when i got that phone call at age 28 was that christians actually can experience second corinthians 6 10 sorrowful yet always rejoicing as i knelt there weeping like i haven't wept since i really i haven't cried like that since i was 28 i'm 74. and i hadn't cried like that before i'd never gone through anything like that and for those two hours i'm crying kneeling by my bed and inside i'm thinking of reason after reason why god has been good to me in her you know i had her so long she was a great mom she died quickly without suffering she's in heaven with jesus thank you thank you thank you well i'm just crying my eyes out so we gotta we gotta teach men and women that you don't draw stupid conclusions from sovereignty or providence that are not biblical and not experientially valid and and one of those would be well if you if you really trust god and god is good and he was behind this horrible thing then you're not going to weep at it because god has good purpose in it that's just contrary to bible contrary to real life valid good experience um man there's so many other directions we could go you have a large section on the providence and personal salvation and causing us to be born again but i want to explore a little bit more providence in the life of john piper you just mentioned the death of your mother in december 1974. um but how does providence impact you um kind of on a daily basis and the kind of things i have in mind are how you think about perseverance right you're within you you're within your shot we all might be but you but you for sure are uh of glory um how do you think about planning how do you think about prayer and you go all kinds of direction prayer for yourself prayer for others prayer for the lost so for you personally a book like this could feel i was maybe a little surprised there are some anecdotes but most of your book is just i'm going to walk through bible and bible and bible and so how does a book like that talk about the personal element of john the life of john piper on the ground and how providence weaves into it yeah i've often said as we as noel and i face crises it's great to be a calvinist i mean we haven't used that code word it's not it's not of the essence but how great is it to rest in the absolute sovereignty of god how great is it we live in a a troubled neighborhood and we have for 40 years and noelle and i for years and years would kneel down beside our bed and we know the difference between a a gunshot and a firecracker and a backfire that's what you do we um we knelt down at our bed at night with four boys and then five with talitha come along and we've said god we commit ourselves to you tonight save us from sin from satan from sickness and from sabotage those four s's in that order of seriousness sabotage nothing more serious sin is most serious and we just handed our lives over and we slept pretty good most of these 40 years in that neighborhood and that that's uh owing to a belief that god is in charge of our lives we lock our doors at night but i don't have a gun we could tell the story of it i used to i used to say that joe reed i said i've never had a gun in my house ever had a firearm in my house and jordan said yes you did because i lived in your house i lived in your house you can take the boy out of texas you can't take texas out of the boy right so i i was i was ready i was ready to baby i'm glad you didn't tell me i was ready to be the answer to one of those prayers that's right if somebody broke in i was going to be a tool in god's hand to deliver john anyway we didn't go there and we still don't go there um that's one the the peace that passes all understanding that comes when you really believe that whatever happens to you god is in control i mean which would you rather have satan or fate or god in control of your suffering your suffering your losses and my answer is god because god governs for good john piper's life prayer is already already mentioned i think providence is the best news in the world for praying because you can actually ask him to do the impossible save my sons save my daughter save my wife save this church save the city and and he says nothing is too hard for me i'm god i can raise the dead whereas if he doesn't have the power to actually take the heart of stone out of a person and put the heart of flesh in what are you going to ask him to do well do the best he can that's not a very great prayer so i think prayer is empowered it's not made a problem it's made powerful same thing with evangelism i mean my i feel free as an evangelist because i don't do the decisive saving god does my job is to speak it paul sends us to do the impossible humanly impossible and so we do uh what else did you ask when you think about when you think about um planning yeah planning so james four right come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go up to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain what is your life it is a miss you don't know what tomorrow will bring you ought to say if the lord wills we will live and do this or that that's everything that's right down to the details so so what he's saying there is not don't plan he's saying plan your day but do it humbly with a sense of submission i'm going to go to duluth and have a retreat with my wife on our anniversary well no you may not rather at least think and be of the disposition god rules that trip god rules whether a tornado hits god rules that and be okay with that and and and the next thing he says is if you don't speak that way you're arrogant i mean that that kind of gives a moral twist to this theology doesn't it like if you resist the statement if the lord wills we will live and do this or that then you are in danger of being an arrogant person so this theology ought to make us humble right it doesn't always right because the human heart is deceitful beyond all things and it underscores um that bit about why it's so important to feel the weight and horror of sin like that's like the hey we're going to go to duluth is such an ordinary human thing to do it with a kind of presumption that we decide whether we go or stay and how long we stay and what we do there and yet the biblical writers look at that normal human attitude and say how arrogant do you have to be to say stuff like that how dare you say something like that and and that's where it kind of pulls us up short and says well we we might be really out step with reality here exactly and that that's the negative downside of it namely if you're an arrogant person if you don't say if the lord wills we will live and do this or that i will brush my teeth if the lord wills i'll get home tonight at 9 30 or 10 o'clock and go to bed if the lord wills i'm walking home tonight through elliott park neighborhood if the lord wills i'll get home tonight that's the negative side the positive side is and one of the things i want so much for this book to produce is a god-entranced world view in other words i get to brush my teeth to jesus i get to depend upon the power of god almighty to raise my kids i get to eat breakfast tomorrow morning i mean grape nuts at the bottom and shredded wheat and granola my favorite food i get to do that because god is merciful god god god god if you don't have a view of providence you won't have a god entrance world you'll you'll be a very naturalistic person who just goes through the motions just like everybody else in the world and there's a way in which you know you you people might think if you believe in providence it makes god really distant and the actual effect is it makes him unbelievably present yeah it does in fact this morning this evening on the way over i was reciting psalm 25 to encourage me not to be intimidated by these cameras and saying at one point that god is close to me god is merciful to me god will guide me the friendship of the lord is for those who fear him that's the that's the peace the friendship of the lord is for those who fear him which literally in the hebrew is the secret counsels of the lord and so i just paused and i said so you're going to share some of the secret councils while i'm talking with you i will i will give you whatever you need so absolutely he's near he is he's nearer than a brother he's he's thought we are the temple of the holy spirit he bought my body so he could inhabit it and give me inclinations and walk in in fellowship with him yeah that would be a sad thing if people inferred whoa he's he's in control of the universe and he does he weighs the what if what's what scholar it was or what the illusion was he said he carries the universe in his pocket like a nut peanut yeah and brings the universe out that's it so you could you could conclude from that whoa he's far away but that would that would just show our limited conceptuality right because god is god he's as close as he is far all right last question still on the personal but i want to land it here persevering in faith so um i've heard you say before things like i go to bed and i pray lord let me be a christian in the morning and i think sometimes people hear that and they think oh that's just hyperion or hyperbole but i think you really mean that like that that when you say things like god i just want to wake up a christian tomorrow that there's a sense of um desperation that in order to be kept god really has to keep you so i'm asking one is that true and then so talk about the perseverance element of how providence and your confidence that you will make it to the end um and and then maybe as a part of that you say in there the most important verse in the bible and we haven't gone to this direction so i wanted to bring this verse in and i think it will i think you'll be able to connect them somehow uh is romans eight thirty two thirty roman numerals eight three you're right so romans 8 32 and perseverance and providence yeah let me see if i can do it well yes it is right last night i woke up my heart was beating harder than i thought it should like you could feel it like and i lay there thinking hmm i wonder what that is and often i'll i'll i sleep on my left side usually so i can easily go like this field take my pulse and now that i got one of these super duper watches that i wear uh which they made me take off for this movie um i can actually see what my pulse is and i look at it and i think good night every one of those could be the last but that's really not what you're asking you're asking not whether i wake up in the morning but will i wake up a christian and i suppose the reason this is big and precious to me and that right now one of my favorite songs is he will hold me fast is because i think jude at the end of his little book manifests in his what is probably the greatest doxology in the bible in terms of verbal magnificence and it goes like this uh now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the throne before the presence of his glory with great joy to him be glory majesty dominion authority before all time now and forever that's a big doxology all of it's celebrating one thing he keeps you keeps you from stumbling presents you blameless gives you everlasting great joy and it made him grope for reach for the biggest words imaginable he really felt it was amazing that he stayed a christian most people don't i do i say to people in conferences regularly what makes you think you'll be a christian tomorrow morning or better tell me the reason why you think you'll wake up a christian tomorrow morning most of them would just say well i've always been a christian i just that's not a good answer god will wake you up a christian or you won't wake up a christian so the providence of god to keep me is precious to me and jude i think expresses the preciousness of it as well as anybody does now the the link and so i do pray it i mean i pray the promises of god i don't say well because it's promise you don't need to pray it i think we pray the promises and so i ask him to keep me cause me to hallow your name tomorrow give me as much life as will honor you tomorrow but don't let me fall don't let me fall away i just read in hosea last friday um it was it was about a king and he said he fell the kings were falling and still they did not honor you i was like don't ever let that happen to me don't don't have to bring me down in order to try to get me to honor you so yeah i pray for god's keeping all the time i don't deserve god's keeping and i don't deserve anything that i have why would i have any sense that i could count on it and that's romans 8 32. the reason romans 8 32 is probably the most important verse in the bible is because of the connection of all human experience into eternity with god's not sparing his son i mean these are two massive things so he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all so that reality is the eternal god has an eternal son whom he loves infinitely and you can hear in the words not spare that it was costly for the father and he gives him into the world and unto suffering and unto death for the sake of sinners and the logical result is he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all a rhetorical question will he not with him freely give us all things now there's several things that have to be solved there why what's the answer to the question he answers he will he will it will that's the way rhetorical questions work so you could state it like this he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all will most certainly give us all things with him then you've got to ask what all things like he took my mom when i was 28. right took my granddaughter what are these all things that he gives me and you have to say okay where can i find the answer to that the answer is well keep reading and just what shall separate us from the love of christ shall tribulation distress persecution famine nakedness as it is written we are being killed all day long okay he's giving me all things and i'm being killed all day long so it must not be comfort in this world prosperity in this world could be a sword it could be distressed could be persecution it could be famine i may go without food it could be nakedness i'd go without clothing and it could be death so all that in the context tells you what all things does not have to mean cannot mean so all things then contextually would be go back to romans 8 28 he works all things together for your good for your good what that you might be conformed to the image of his son so everything i need to get me to glory so that god is glorified and my happiness is secured forever and ever which is which is the end point of this book and if you say what is the goal of providence in creation in redemption in consummation in new heavens and new earth with the bride of christ and the son exalted in her midst the answer is god's grace glorified in his peoples being eternally satisfied in him i mean i didn't plan for this to be a book about christian hedonism but i discovered in those two years that this thing i've been working on for 40 years is no peripheral thing christian hedonism that god is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied in him is no peripheral thing it's where everything is going god will be glorified and we will be satisfied and everything is going to work to that end even even the most horrible things that's great thank you john for this thank you for that book i i do believe it will help and bless many i was deeply encouraged as i uh read it and so maybe would you pray now for that book to do as much good as god wants it to do thank you what a privilege lord to bow with many people lord and i pray that they would be bowing with joe and me to acknowledge that we are not god you are god we don't run the world you run the world we don't run our lives you run our lives we are absolutely utterly dependent upon you and i ask i ask lord that you would cause those who consider what's in the book to be biblical in their response i don't claim to be infallible i want to point people to the book that is infallible and to the god who's infinitely worthy beautiful great satisfying so make that happen lord may sinners be saved may saints be strengthened me missions advance may churches be purified lord glorify your great name in the gladness of your people i pray in jesus name amen you

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Published: Sat Mar 06 2021